Smoke and mirrors (disambiguation)

Smoke and mirrors is a metaphor for a deceptive, fraudulent or insubstantial explanation or description.

Smoke and mirrors may also refer to:

Literature

Music

Albums

Imagine Dragons

Imagine Dragons is an American rock band from Las Vegas, Nevada. Imagine Dragons' lineup consists of lead vocalist Dan Reynolds, guitarist Wayne "Wing" Sermon, bassist Ben McKee and drummer Daniel Platzman. The band gained exposure following the release of their debut studio album, Night Visions (2012) and first single "It's Time". The band's second studio album Smoke + Mirrors reached number one on the Billboard 200, Canadian Albums Chart, and UK Albums Chart.Night Visions peaked at number two on the weekly Billboard 200 and UK Albums Chart. According to Billboard, Imagine Dragons topped the year-end rock rankings for 2013;Billboard named them "The Breakthrough Band of 2013", and Rolling Stone named their single "Radioactive" "the biggest rock hit of the year".MTV called them "the year's biggest breakout band".

Imagine Dragons won two American Music Awards for Favorite Alternative Artist, a Grammy Award for Best Rock Performance, five Billboard Music Awards, and a World Music Award. In May 2014, the band was nominated for a total of fourteen different Billboard Music Awards, including Top Artist of the Year and a Milestone Award, recognizing innovation and creativity of different artists across different genres.

Smoke

Smoke is a collection of airborne solid and liquid particulates and gases emitted when a material undergoes combustion or pyrolysis, together with the quantity of air that is entrained or otherwise mixed into the mass. It is commonly an unwanted by-product of fires (including stoves, candles, oil lamps, and fireplaces), but may also be used for pest control (fumigation), communication (smoke signals), defensive and offensive capabilities in the military (smoke-screen), cooking, or smoking (tobacco, cannabis, etc.). Smoke is used in rituals where incense, sage, or resin is burned to produce a smell for spiritual purposes. Smoke is sometimes used as a flavoring agent, and preservative for various foodstuffs. Smoke is also a component of internal combustion engine exhaust gas, particularly diesel exhaust.

Smoke inhalation is the primary cause of death in victims of indoor fires. The smoke kills by a combination of thermal damage, poisoning and pulmonary irritation caused by carbon monoxide, hydrogen cyanide and other combustion products.

Smoke and mirrors

Smoke and mirrors is a metaphor for a deceptive, fraudulent or insubstantial explanation or description. The source of the name is based on magicians' illusions, where magicians make objects appear or disappear by extending or retracting mirrors amid a distracting burst of smoke. The expression may have a connotation of virtuosity or cleverness in carrying out such a deception.

In mathematics, 'Name is Smoke and Mirrors' ('Name ist Schall und Rauch', literally: 'name is sound and smoke' in German) from Goethe's poem Faust was Henri Poincare's response to Felix Klein's vexation of Poincare's creation of the term 'the Kleinian function for all other cases of S'.

In the field of computer programming, it is used to describe a program or functionality that does not yet exist, but appears as though it does. This is often done to demonstrate what a resulting project will function/look like after the code is complete — at a trade show, for example.

See also

Mirror

A mirror is an object that reflects light in such a way that, for incident light in some range of wavelengths, the reflected light preserves many or most of the detailed physical characteristics of the original light. This is different from other light-reflecting objects that do not preserve much of the original wave signal other than color and diffuse reflected light.

The most familiar type of mirror is the plane mirror, which has a flat screen surface. Curved mirrors are also used, to produce magnified or diminished images or focus light or simply distort the reflected image.

Mirrors are commonly used for personal grooming or admiring oneself (in which case the archaic term looking-glass is sometimes still used), decoration, and architecture. Mirrors are also used in scientific apparatus such as telescopes and lasers, cameras, and industrial machinery. Most mirrors are designed for visible light; however, mirrors designed for other wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation are also used.